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I wasn't really intending it as a steelman. I was trying to describe what I think are the actual motivations and mindsets of the donators.
Yes, it's emotive. They want to defend someone who's being attacked and stand up to "bullies". If my post gave you the idea it was a coordinated strategy motivated by cold calculations about cost-effective activism, that wasn't my intention.
Imagine them less like western leaders approving budgets and shipments and more like the people who donated to ukrainian forces to get custom messages written on grenades. (Notice the similarity to people leaving spicy messages with their donations?) It's about wanting to support the fight.
The desired outcome for the donators is that leftists see that trying to cancel people as racists no longer destroys them when the victim instead get lots of money, stop doing so, and therefore no one gets into those situations anymore (i.e. no viral shitstorm happens when people say "nigger"). Similar to how, althouth it strains the comparison, the West is hoping that Putin realizes that invading another country is not worth it because of the support they'll be getting.
Whether that outcome is achievable is of course a different question.
I do not think that this will work. The left can cause shitstorms a lot easier than the right can cough up money.
And even if that was not true, the non-exploitable equilibrium would be if the left stopped trying to cancel people because they realized that the minute they focused their anger on someone, they would be showered in money by their opponents. I am not holding my breath for that. It would require playing politics on level two, and most people play level one. I mean, the single most important asset Trump had for winning the primaries was the left-leaning press, which loved to hate him. "You won't believe what the horrible racist has done now" etc. They never stopped to consider that the median R primary voter would be rather unsympathetic to them, and might consider "Trump really riles up the liberals" a point in his favor.
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